"If you live in a community where there is uncovered dry coal ash deposit and the wind blows you may be inhaling cadmium," PSR's Barbara Gottleib said. "The threats from cadmium are pretty severe: kidney disease, lung diseases like emphysema."

"The purpose of a city, the primary purpose of a city, is to ensure that its residents are safe," says Angela Johnson Meszaros, a lawyer with Physicians for Social Responsibility, who is working with the drill site's neighborhood groups.

“It may not be taking in evidence that the doses that were assumed to be on board the USS Reagan may have been under-reported,” said Dr. Robert Gould, a former Kaiser pathologist who is president of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

A report on used nuclear fuel management at the nuclear power plant near Richland will be released Wednesday in Seattle by Heart of America Northwest and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.